


Fever

by robberreynard



Category: Fallout 3
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, Ghoul, Ghoulification, Graphic, Project Purity, Sickness, radiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-24 23:31:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2600390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robberreynard/pseuds/robberreynard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isaac suffers from something worse than just radiation sickness after Project Purity is brought back to life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fever

**Author's Note:**

> And one more kinkeme prompt for tonight. It is crushingly depressive and it just stays depressive throughout.

Headaches split his skull open like a well-aimed sniper. Vomit brought up copious amounts of blood and bile and bits of lung and stomach lining. Low blood pressure, light head, he could barely sit up and every time they jabbed a needle in his arm it opened his veins like sulfurous acid. His arm from the bicep down was a black hole of bruises and pinpricks that refused to stop bleeding. They appeared and disappeared at random intervals, every time he looked down at myself new ones had bloomed and old ones faded, and he couldn't recall the time in between them. 

Sometimes people surrounded him like a murder of crows attracted by the sound of a racing heart monitor, sometimes only one or two at a time when it was calm, other times he woke up alone except for the body across from him. The second he tried to rise and speak to her, someone would of course run in and settle him back down into the uncomfortable gurney. Just as well. Sarah had yet to open her eyes in the....however long they had been here, and the movement felt like thousands of needles stabbing at his nerve endings. He stopped trying after the first few times.

They gave him Med-X for the pain, only to open more wounds that refused to stop pulsing blood in his arms. It helped, but the Brotherhood apparently weren't too familiar with the term of “moderation” or “highly addictive narcotic”, as they stabbed him with the syringes once or twice a day and wrote his lethargic and confused ramblings off on the lethal cloud of radiation he had been exposed to. Idiots. He'd managed to avoid becoming a junkie for the two years he was above ground, now his doctors were pumping him full of chems. The pain of radiation sickness mingled with the pain of addiction and withdrawal, making it impossible to tell which was which. 

Through all of it, he had no one to blame but James. 

When he finally was allowed to sit up, he was greeted with looks varying from a degree of sympathy to disgust and every mingle of emotion in between. They wouldn't let him near a mirror. Any surface that might have been semi reflective once were so dingy he could see only vague shapes when he looked in them. His fingers were too numb to feel, his eyesight was blurry, his arms were little more than black and blue blots he could never quite focus on. Elder Lyons was the first to visit him, to tell him of the explosion at the rotunda that nearly killed both he and Sarah, but seemed hesitant to say much more than that, other than to task the great Lone Wanderer once more.  
Charon, surprisingly, appeared at the foot of his bed later that day, his rotten face especially sour, Dogmeat at his heels. But there was something odd in his milky eyes that was difficult to place as he looked on to his ill employer. Something close to pity.

“That bad, huh?” Isaac croaked, only now realizing how painful it was to speak. Between disuse, thirst, and the acid that had been rising in his throat every day before then, his throat felt torn to shreds.   
Dogmeat whined softly from his spot at Charon's feet.

“You haven't seen then,” Charon said, a little quieter than he normally would have spoken.

“Seen what?” He might have, probably should have felt dread, but he was too tired to really care if his face had slid off in the throws of his illness. 

“You look like reheated shit.”

“What a colorful and accurate way to describe how I feel. You're a poet, Charon,” he chuckled, the strain only making his voice hoarser, “...Doctors said it was acute radiation sickness.” He smiled thinly to himself. “It's not though, is it...” 

“It's a little more developed than radiation sickness.” 

The air in Isaac's lungs evaporated within an instant. He'd expected as much, but to actually know...He held out his hand to Charon.  
“Help me up...” 

Charon obeyed and pulled him to his feet with ease, an easy feat as not only was Isaac notably shorter than the giant ghoul, he was skin and bones at this point, having been fed through a tube for weeks. He cast a single glance towards the figure on the other side of the room. Even through what he now knew to be developing cataracts, he could see her outline shimmer and rise with her every breath. There was some solace in that. 

“See any Mentats?”

A loud rattle a few moments later answered for him, Charon presumably shoving the medication into Isaac's hands, though he felt nothing. It was a great task to get his hands coordinated enough to pop open the small tin, but he managed, lifting the little box to his mouth to let a couple slide down his ruined throat. It took mere moments for his bloodstream to hum and his vision to clear.

Looking down at himself, he saw in now gut wrenching clarity, that his skin had broken out into dry scales, taking on a quasi reptilian appearance where it had not rotted away entirely. He assumed that was what the bandages wrapped around his forearm was hiding, if the dried bloodstains were any indication. He ran his fingers along a patch of skin and it was if he'd taken a razor blade to his own flesh. It peeled away at his touch. But he didn't gasp until he realized he couldn't feel it. 

“Shit...Shit, shit...” He clutched the arm tightly as blood began to bloom from the injury he'd just created. “Shit...Fuck...” 

He hastily grabbed a nearby roll of bandages and haphazardly wrapped it around his arm several more times than he needed to. His stomach was coiling tightly and the sensation was rising to his chest, like someone had snaked their hands into his innards and went about squeezing his organs. Breathing was difficult as he clutched to his arm, the white cotton bandages already dyed red. He felt Charon's eyes on his with the terrifyingly acute sense of being laid bare in front of the ghoul looming over him. The only other time he'd felt like this was the first time he'd entered the rotunda, and Charon was the only one there to see he and James part ways. But now...no, now wasn't the time to fall apart, curse the heavens, wail and gnash his teeth. So he swallowed down the building panic, felt the lump rake down his throat, and looked up at Charon with a small smile before presenting his arm.

“My inheritance.” The only thing his father had left him that would last. With a bitter little laugh, he bent down with great difficulty to retrieve his rifle, and exited the compound with Charon and Dogmeat close on either side.   
No one one made direct eye contact. No one asked him where he was going. 

They didn't talk much about him on the radio after that.


End file.
